THE SECOND PAGE OF INC NEWS

Sunday, September 14, 2014

It's almost easier to list what Alibaba group doesn't do. The company's first business was alibaba.com set up by the company's founder Jack Ma in 1999. The website helps to connect exporters in China (and other countries) with companies in over 190 countries around the world. The system allows a business in the UK to find a manufacturer in China and have a range of goods produced and shipped.

It's not just businesses that use Alibaba's websites. It also owns taobao.com, China's largest shopping website, and tmall.com, which offers a wide selection of branded goods to China's emerging middle class.

Alibaba's reach does not end there, it also runs the online payment system alipay.com, which operates like Paypal. It also has a large stake in Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, and the online video provider, Youku Tudou, which operates in a similar way to YouTube.

The company also offers online marketing, cloud computing and a logistics operation. Alibaba's growth in its core business has allowed it to expand into new areas. It recently bought a controlling stake in a film business and 50% of China's most successful football club, Guangzhou Evergrande.

Finally, and possibly most significantly, it has plans to enter the banking industry.

Tourists from the Urals who were on a rafting tour in north Russia have found the remnants of a mesosaur, an extinct aquatic reptile that had lived about 150 million years ago, the local fishing club chairman said on Sunday.

The tourists who are members of the Wild North fishing club discovered the mesosaur fossil during their rafting down the Ruta-Yu River on the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic, Club Chairman Yevgeny Svitov said."The boat of our group member Oleg Yushkov bumped against something. It was not very deep there and he could discern a stone looking like the head of a prehistoric animal," Svitov said, Itar-Tass reports."He made a photo of the discovery and showed it to us. We were at first skeptical about his find, saying there could not be any mesosaurs on Yamal," the fishing club chairman said."However, Yushkov sent his photos to Moscow scientists who confirmed that this is the fossil of a mesosaur who had lived about 150 million years ago," the fishing club chairman said."However, a research has to be carried out to establish the exact age of the remnants. We can't take away the find without special permission. We hope that we'll get it before the river is covered with ice," he said.The fishing club is currently in talks with the Urals branch of the Russian Academy of Science on retrieving the mesosaur remnants from the water, he said.

A lawyer made famous by her roster of Russian celebrity clients was murdered in front of her apartment building in central Moscow over the weekend, and investigators suspect her involvement with an organized crime case may have been the motive.

Tatyana Akimtseva's car stopped in front of her home late Friday night. Footage from a security-camera showed the lawyer's driver step out to gather her belongings, at which point an unidentified man emerged. The man fired a gun at the 44-year old driver, killing him. He then fired at Akimtseva, who had made it to the front door of her building before being brought down.

Akimtseva had been representing Sergei Zhurba, a Moscow region businessman who had testified in court against Dmitry Belkin, who is widely believed to be the leader the Orekhovo gang, which ranked among Moscow's most powerful and violent during the turbulent 1990s.

Revenge ranks as a top priority among the gang's criminal pursuits, Interfax reported, citing investigative sources.

Zhurba had testified to investigators that in the 1990s, he was forced to include Belkin's wife and mother among the stakeholders of his business as a means of paying the group off. In the ensuing decades, the gang has been largely crushed by arrests and police raids. In light of its weakened status, Zhurba removed the two women from his company's list of stakeholders. Shortly afterward, in 2010, he was the target of a murder attempt, which saw his car ravaged by machine gun fire. Zhurba's bodyguard was killed in the incident, while he and his driver sustained injuries.

After surviving the attempt, Zhurba began cooperating with investigators — providing as much information as he could on the group's activities since the 1990s. A second assassination attempt followed suit this past June in the entrance to his office. Zhurba's driver Alexei Zakharov, who was also testifying against Belkin, was murdered this July.

Around that time, Akimtseva told reporters that she feared for her life in light of all that her client had endured.

Mass apathy and a scarcity of serious challengers to state-preferred candidates were the recurrent themes of Russia's nationwide voting day on Sunday, which pundits said attested to the Kremlin's tightening grip on all levels of the Russian electoral system.

Voters in 84 of the country's 85 federal subjects were summoned to some 64,000 polling stations to elect 30 regional governors, 14 regional and 21 municipal legislatures, as well as other forms of regional authority. But the scale of the exercise did not match the population's lackluster enthusiasm for Sunday's events, which has been molded by two decades of electoral rigging and the stifling of political alternatives, according to independent observers.

Members of the opposition have accused President Vladimir Putin of constricting the country's electoral system by creating a facade of openness, which they say has contributed to a consolidation of the Kremlin's control over regional and local politics.

In 2012, Putin reinstated direct gubernatorial elections, after having initially banned them in 2004.

Last year, Putin signed legislation vesting regions with the right to choose whether to elect their governors directly, or to let regional legislatures pick from a list of Kremlin-approved candidates.

The vast majority of those registered to vote in Moscow's City Duma elections, in fact, snubbed Sunday's poll. As of 3 p.m., the turnout was nearly 13 percent. Dmitry Oreshkin, the head of the Merkator research group, which monitors regional Russian politics, told The Moscow Times on Sunday that the turnout would be unlikely to exceed 15 to 20 percent by close of polling stations at 8 p.m.

Foreign experts and politicians will write a book on the Constitution of Kazakhstan,Tengrinews reports citing a member of the Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan Anar Zhailganova.

“A book entitled Kazakhstani Trend: from Totalitarian to Democratic and Legal State will be released. The book will contain opinions about our Constitution, and show development of constitutionalism in Kazakhstan from the point of view of foreign experts, politicians and lawyers. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Gianni Buquicchio of the Venice Comission and a number of chairmen of Asian and European constitutional courts have expressed willingness to contribute to the book,” Zhailganova said.

In addition, it is planned to prepare a scientific and practical commentary book on the present Constitution as well as a study of the development of the Constitution, Kazakhstan’s experience and development of constitutional control in the country.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan met September 12 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Dushanbe to discuss Eurasian integration. The situation in Ukraine was also among the issues on the agenda, according to Russia’s RIA Novosti.

“At the talks the sides discussed the current issues of bilateral relations between the two nations, as well as Eurasian integration and further development of the Customs Union. Besides, the presidents exchanged their opinions on the situation in Ukraine”, the Kremlin’s Press Service reports.

According to President Nazarbayev’s website, akorda.kz, President called security cooperation a priority within the SCO, highlighting that soonest signing of the agreement on cooperation and interaction on border-related issues would strengthen measures of confidence along the common borders of the SCO member states. He stressed that his country was ready to facilitate joint security efforts to enhance the regional counter-terrorism structure.

Kazakhstan is planning to build at least half a dozen new factories in Aktobe Oblast in western Kazakhstan, Tengrinews reports. The plans were announced by the Akim (Mayor) of the Oblast Archimed Mukhambetov.

"Together with the national company KazMunaiGas we are working on setting up a plant worth $230 million for the production of catalytic cracking catalysts. It is a chemical compound for deep oil processing to obtain, most importantly, quality products. Currently all of them (advanced oil products) are imported," Mukhambetov said.

The official said that soon all the relevant documents would be signed. '